


the war is over and we are beginning

by nirav



Category: RWBY
Genre: F/F, bees schnees week 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-22
Updated: 2020-07-22
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:34:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25450969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nirav/pseuds/nirav
Summary: “Hey, Mom,” she says finally, dragging her eyes open.  Her head tilts down onto Weiss’s, one hand falling until she can curl it around Blake’s ankle absently.  “I miss you.”
Relationships: Blake Belladonna/Weiss Schnee/Yang Xiao Long
Comments: 15
Kudos: 183





	the war is over and we are beginning

**Author's Note:**

> bees schnees week day 3: meet the parents

_when you went away, you were just a kid  
and if you lost it all, and you lost it  
well, we'll still be there when your war is over _

* * *

After the war, there is peace, but not quiet, because with peace comes grief, and reconstruction, and paperwork and bureaucracy. There are cities to rebuild, governments to reconceive, democracies to redesign into functionality. Entire populations of Valen and Vacuan citizens still need to be resettled. Menagerien property, formerly dirt cheap, sells at a gold premium, its tropical shores distant and untouched by Salem's War.

There is peace, and reconstruction, and in all of the clamor and noise and fanfare of it all, team RWBY takes a vacation. 

Ruby sets off on her own, quiet and alone, guarded by her silver eyes and Maiden powers, her own competence and a quiet need to deal with the past years in silence. She hugs her sister, her family, her team tight and tells them she loves them, promises to come home soon, and sets off with her head held high but the shadows of a war ended but lives lost under her silver eyes.

Yang watches her go and holds tight to Weiss with one hand and Blake with the other and wills herself not to cry. Blake sends a message to her parents-- that she's safe and well; that her team, wartorn and full hearted, bright eyed and battle scarred, her family that she's built, is going to spend some time recuperating before she comes home-- and Weiss doesn't bother, because Winter has always had some Atlesian operative or another keeping tabs on her, and the three of them go to Patch.

The house smells stale when they get there, bags kicking up flecks of dust when Yang dumps them carelessly onto the living room floor. Blake and Weiss follow inside more cautiously, Blake peering around with unabashed interest at the place where Yang grew up, Weiss with a more demure curiosity. 

“Where’s Tai?” She shuts the door behind her and then wrinkles her nose, because the house has a dry feel to it, like it’s been shut up for weeks, and she opens it back up again and busies herself with opening the windows as well. 

“He’s been helping with the reconstruction work at Beacon,” Yang says absently, barely blinking when Blake’s fingers slide through hers, chin propping on her shoulder. “He said he’ll be back tonight.”

They’ve met Tai, just like they met nearly every hunter in the four kingdoms at some point throughout the war, and Weiss raises an eyebrow skeptically at whether he’ll actually be back tonight or not, hums quietly. There’s so much of Tai in Yang-- warmth and kindness, an unyielding need to protect and to care-- but practically every ounce of pragmatism and true realism in her is tied to the red in her eyes. 

“I’m going to shower,” Weiss announces, because she needs something to do, because they all need something to do, because they’ve been in a war since they were seventeen and now the war’s over and there’s no mission until she returns to Atlas to fill her seat on the council, no battle, no crisis, and they’re standing in the middle of Yang’s dad’s living room with still-packed bags at their feet full that are ostensibly for a vacation but mostly still full of weapons and supplies that would carry them through a roving commando mission, and if the only mission she can come up with is to scrub the smell of travel and exhaustion off her skin then, well, it’s a start. “I smell like airship.”

“Yeah, you stink,” Blake says, sliding around until she’s behind Yang and can wrinkle her nose at Weiss over Yang’s shoulder. It works to shake Yang out of her reverie from where she’s staring at the pictures on the wall, and she laughs, quieter than usual, when Weiss grumbles.

Weiss hefts one of the bags, pausing on her way to the stairs to push up on her toes and press a kiss to Yang’s mouth, tilting over towards Blake and then instead flicking a finger against the sensitive edge of a Faunus ear instead with a _hmph_ and marching upstairs.

“Rude,” Blake says, whining and dramatic, watching as Weiss disappears upstairs and pushing her face into Yang’s neck. “Do you want to shower too?”

Yang’s quiet, uncharacteristically so, hands absently covering Blake’s on her stomach. “Maybe later.” She breathes in slowly, head tilting against Blake’s. “You go ahead. I want to make sure the perimeter guards are set up.” 

She cranes her head around to press a kiss to Blake’s temple. “Don’t have too much fun without me.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Blake says drolly, even though the glint in her eyes, the one that’s definitely gotten them in trouble more than once in shared encampments and has scarred Ruby for life, says otherwise, and Yang watches her bound upstairs after Weiss. Her chest aches to follow but her boots stay rooted to the floor, because the war is over and they _won_ and they have a whole lifetime in front of them to live together, and she should be ecstatic and following them upstairs for celebratory shower sex, but instead she’s worrying about perimeter shields on an island that even before the war only had a grimm attack three times her entire childhood.

She drags her hands through her hair, exhausted, muscles aching with the phantom pains of too many battles, too much war, too much loss. It’s been days, almost weeks since the last fight, the last time she had to absorb hit after hit until she had enough power to blast through the atmosphere if she really needed to, and her body’s healed, but the weeks and months and years of stress and fatigue and constant, unending fighting have left a soreness lingering deep in her muscles, in her bones, that no amount of time seems to unwind. 

Dust particles drift slow in the sunlight, the room bright from all the windows Weiss had levered open. The last time Yang had been here, her prosthetic had still been a stock model; she’d still felt incomplete, unbalanced, untethered in a way that hadn’t started to right itself until she found Weiss in the middle of the Anima wilderness, until Blake found them at Haven. 

Yang breathes in deep, dragging the humid summer air deep into her lungs and holding it there, and lets it out slowly. She strips out of her jacket, the leather too heavy for Patch’s summers, leaves it on the couch, and discards her boots and socks as well, rolls up the cuffs of her pants. She could change properly-- she has a whole dresser of shorts upstairs, an unending supply of cheap flip flops, plenty of proper summer clothes for Patch’s sweltering summer heat-- but it takes more effort than she’s willing to put into it and instead she ties her hair up off the back of her neck and sets off barefoot, barely remembering to close the door behind her and set the perimeter guards from her scroll as she does.

* * *

Blake sprawls across the bed in Yang’s room-- so clearly Yang’s room, as much from the books on the shelves to the desk covered in scattered remnants of pieces from the first version of her prosthetic that she’d taken apart as from the fact that the bedroom across the hall has a small-scale model of Crescent Rose bolted into the wall over the bed-- in clothes she’d dug out of Yang’s dressers, denim shorts old and comfortable with a faded Signal patch on one leg, and a t-shirt with a collar stretched so far it hangs lazily off of one shoulder and lets the breeze from the open window play across her skin, and watches as Weiss towels her hair dry.

“It’s absurd how humid it is here,” Weiss mutters. 

“Better than Atlas,” Blake offers with a winning smile, teeth flashing bright against dark skin still flushed from the shower and Weiss pins her with a glare that would make most hunters and possibly most grimm run for cover. 

“Atlas is terrible but at least it isn’t humid,” Weiss says primly. “It’s _sticky_ , Blake!”

“Oh, you’re going to have so much fun when we go to Menagerie, then,” Blake says, rolling over to prop up on one elbow. Weiss scoffs, imperious and fully Weiss Schnee, chair of the board of the Schnee Dust Company, licensed huntress, war hero, Atlesian council member, and the effect is completely ruined as she frowns and pulls her hair-- shorter, now, after a situation mid-war involving a rookie Mistrali huntsman that fortunately just hacked off her hair instead of her head; just as fortunately she'd nearly only taken his license instead of his jugular in retaliation-- into a ponytail and exposes the hickey blooming on her throat. “Besides, you look good sweaty, you know.”

“Do you have to enjoy my discomfort quite so much?” Weiss flings her towel across the room, humming in satisfaction when it slaps into Blake’s face and Blake drops back down onto the bed with a grunt. “Did Yang say if she was going to come up as well?”

Blake sits up, bare feet falling to the floorboards. “She said she was checking the perimeter guards.” Her Faunus ears twitch, turning this way and that, and Weiss is quiet, waiting, frowning down at her hands in her lap.

“Do you hear her?”

“No,” Blake says after a long moment, mouth turning down. Weiss pushes up to her feet, crossing the room absently until her hands can settle at Blake’s shoulders and curl around the back of her neck, fingers working lazily into the damp strands of hair at the back of her head. Her hair is shorter than any of theirs now, barely long enough to tangle; as much a wartime concession-- since Atlas she just kept going shorter and shorter until she nearly buzzed it all off when they made it to Vacuo, the difficulty of managing clippers around her Faunus ears the only reasons she didn’t-- as a nod to the way that, the first time she cropped it short and boyish, Yang dropped her own prosthetic on her foot and Weiss’s eyes darkened to a shade Blake didn’t know was physically possible.

“I’m worried about her,” Weiss says softly. Blake murmurs in agreement, hands finding Weiss’s hips and head tilting forward until she’s leaning against Weiss’s abdomen, nosing against her dress over the scar from Haven, the one that’s mirrored on her back, reaching from halfway up her ribcage almost down to her hip, the one Blake didn’t see happen but Yang did, that’s haunted both of them for years, Yang because she was there when Weiss almost died and Blake because she wasn’t. 

Weiss’s fingernails drag softly along her scalp and Blake’s eyes drift shut. “I thought it’d be good for her to come home for a while.”

“Me too.” Weiss finds a rare tangle in her hair and sets to working it out, fingers deft and gentle. “I imagine it’s-- hard, coming home to somewhere untouched. The disparity.” 

“Maybe,” Blake says into Weiss’s stomach, fingers dragging up her back. Weiss sighs, quiet for long seconds, and then presses a kiss to Blake’s hair and steps back, ignoring the whine from Blake. 

“Let’s go,” she says, brisk and businesslike. Blake lets herself be pulled up to her feet, dragging the wet towel up with her so she can hang it over the door as she follows Weiss, fingers still tangled with hers. 

“Do you know where you’re going?”

“I have an idea,” Weiss says over her shoulder, wet ponytail snapping into Blake’s face, and Blake _hmphs_ irritably, but there’s no weight to it, because the war is over and they’re together, all three of them, and they might not be _whole_ \-- there are burn scars on Weiss’s left shoulder that’ll never fully disappear, and a divot of muscle in Blake’s back that even Jaune’s semblance couldn’t help her grow back, and Yang’s semblance, terrifying and powerful, was always just a tiny bit less with half of one arm missing-- but together they’re more than the sum of all their broken parts, and that’s always mattered more. She follows Weiss out of the house, understanding settling into her stomach when they turn westward, and her fingers settle more firmly between Weiss’s as they walk towards the sunset and the sound of waves crashing into cliffs.

* * *

Yang sits with her arms wrapped loosely around her knees, staring aimlessly out towards the sunset. She’d come out here with something to say, but instead had sat quietly, silently, unmoving, so very unlike herself. She’s spent the last years, her entire life, almost, in perpetual movement-- chasing after Ruby, training at Signal, at Beacon, relearning a broken body and a new arm, finding her way into a war and then fighting her way through it-- and can’t remember, beyond brief snippets of respite, stolen in tents and campsites, small and fleeting, when she could breathe and rest and just _be_.

There’s a rustle down the hill behind her, and she tilts her head, listening. Footsteps, too light to be her father’s, too many to be just one person’s. She closes her eyes and smiles, breathes, blinks against the telltale burn in her eyes, because she’d only ever mentioned in the vaguest of terms where this was, knows Ruby only barely spoke about it, but of course they found her. Of course they knew where to look.

She twists around until she can look back, watching as they climb the hill up from the treeline. Blake’s wearing some of Yang’s own clothes, Signal shorts that Yang’s pretty sure that she hasn’t fit into since she was fifteen and a t-shirt that’d be too big even on her, hanging half off her shoulder and tied up at her ribs against the summer heat, short hair drying messy and windswept around her ears; Weiss is a picture of sophistication as always, hair tied up neatly and yellow sundress fluttering in the breeze skating in from the ocean. They look good on Patch, comfortable; the family she built throughout a war that took her across Remnant, together at the first place she called home. A familiar hum surges under Yang’s skin, comforting and warm, because as unsettled as she might feel, they’re together, and home, and they have all the time in the world to sort out the future.

She turns back to face the sunset as they draw closer, waiting as they settle down on either side of her, Blake to her left and Weiss to her right like they always do. It’s been years since Blake’s wavered with guilt over Yang’s prosthetic, but the remnants remain, and Blake always defaults to her left side. Blake mirrors her posture, arms circling her knees loosely, and Weiss tucks her feet under her delicately, arranges the hem of her dress, sets a hand softly at the small of Yang’s back. Her fingers slide absently under the hem of Yang’s shirt, forever cool even in the oppressive humidity, and Yang’s eyes slide shut under her touch.

In front of them, the headstone for her mother’s empty grave sits quietly in the thick grass, a fresh set of roses settled carefully against it. Her father always left them for her, every week, like clockwork. Even war couldn’t change some things. 

“How’d you know?” Yang says eventually, when Weiss’s hand has crawled higher along her spine and Blake’s arm has slung across her shoulders. Weiss’s fingers fit between her vertebra and she shrugs one shoulder, and Blake makes a noncommittal sound from her other side.

“You haven’t been home in a long time,” Blake says eventually. Her fingertips track down from Yang’s shoulder to the top edge of the port for her prosthetic, brushing along the scar tissue edging along the implantation where it’s most sensitive, where it always makes Yang shiver without meaning to, and back up again. Weiss leans closer, presses a kiss to Yang’s bare shoulder, the curve of Blake's wrist. “It makes sense that you’d want to come see her.”

Weiss leans her cheek against Yang’s shoulder, staring pensively at the simple marker, the carefully maintained perimeter of grass surrounding it, cropped shorter than the knee-high stalks further out, the small bouquet of roses set carefully in front of it. She’s known about Summer Rose’s memorial for years, since Ruby came back for their second semester at Beacon and mentioned offhand about how it was always her last stop before leaving Patch and Yang, three desks away in Professor Port’s classroom, had stiffened and her hair had flickered, but had stayed quiet. 

“You should introduce us,” she murmurs, fingernails digging gently into Yang’s back. “It’s only polite.”

Blake wiggles her hand out from Yang’s shoulder until it can curl into the hair at the back of Weiss’s head, arm slung along the back of Yang’s neck and fingers tangled into Weiss’s hair, and Yang closes her eyes and breathes in the wind blowing in from the ocean, salty and heavy. She used to come out here constantly, bringing Ruby until she was old enough to come on her own, spending hours on her own every weekend she was home from Signal, from Beacon, until she left after Beacon fell and hadn’t been home for years. Part of her had wondered, almost, if her mother’s memorial would still be standing when so much of the rest of the world had fallen, but of course it was still there. Patch was too densely wooded for farming, too remote for anyone but a collection of hunters to build a home with their children, and the emptiness had meant grimm rarely found their way there. Of course her mother’s empty grave was still exactly as she left it.

“Hey, Mom,” she says finally, dragging her eyes open. Her head tilts down onto Weiss’s, one hand falling until she can curl it around Blake’s ankle absently. “I miss you.”

She clears her throat, old aches that have nothing to do with war, nothing to do with the limb she lost, knotting deep in her stomach. “Ruby’s doing good. She’s-- you’d be so proud of her. She saved all of us.”

Yang sniffs, blinking at the way her eyes burn, because she’s still young, she knows, but almost older than her mother ever got to be; because her sister has lost so much more than she ever should have; because they all have. Blake squeezes closer, knee knocking against hers softly, and Yang smiles, watery and uncertain. 

“Dad’s in Vale, but he’s-- okay, I think,” Yang carries on. “I mean, you know he was never the same after we lost you. But he’s okay. He’s helping with the reconstruction and you know him. He’s always been at his best when he’s taking care of people.”

“Sounds familiar,” Weiss murmurs, and Blake snorts, and Yang burns, soft and familiar, and settles more comfortably between them.

“This is Weiss,” she says, shifting until she can press a kiss into Weiss’s hair, still damp from the shower and curling slightly in the humidity. “Couple years back she called Raven a little bitch right to her face.”

“Yang,” Weiss hisses out, slapping at her arm while Blake laughs outright. “I did _not_.”

“It was a top ten moment of my life,” Yang carries on, unfazed. “You’d like her, Mom.”

Weiss sits up straighter, hand still pressed to Yang’s skin, and her right hand lands between her heart and her left shoulder crisply, chin dipping formally in a version of an Atlesian salute. 

“Ma’am,” she says, polite and formal, an impossible gravitas to her that only Weiss Schnee could manage while sitting on the ground barefoot in a sundress, hair still wet from the shower and a hand under Yang’s shirt, and it burns hot down Yang’s spine.

“Show off,” Blake mutters from her other side, and a laugh bubbles out of Yang when quiet indignation bursts out of Weiss.

“And this is Blake,” Yang adds, hand sliding from Blake’s ankle up towards her calf and then back down. “She-- we’ve been partners since initiation at Beacon.” She glances over at Blake, eyes watery, and grips tighter to her ankle. “We went through a lot to find each other.”

“We’re-- this is my family, Mom. You’d love them as much as I do, I know you would.” 

She glances over towards Blake, gold eyes burning in the setting sun and teeth flashing white against her dark skin when she smiles, soft and certain; to Weiss, sitting tall and sure, hand an anchor at her spine keeping her steady, and nods at her mother’s gravestone.

“They keep me out of trouble,” she says, smiling when it draws a scoff from the both of them.

“As if anyone could do _that_ ,” Weiss says. “It’s all we can do to remind her to _eat_ sometimes. Was she this impossible as a kid?”

“I assume she was,” Blake says conversationally, ignoring the indignant whine from Yang. “Hush, not talking to you, talking _about_ you.”

“About how you _refuse_ to be the first one to go to bed, ever,” Weiss says. “Because you insist on making sure everyone is okay before you can sleep.”

“Or how you always insisted on taking the first watch and then always forget to wake either of us up,” Blake adds.

“Because we ‘needed our rest’,” Weiss finishes for her sharply.

“What about the time she got into a drinking contest with Nora and wound up with a three day hangover?”

“Also, there was that time in Vacuo with the moonshine and the--”

“Weiss!” Yang hisses out, mortified, as if her mother actually was standing right there listening to them talk about how she wound up half naked in the wrong tent and accidentally punched Oscar in the teeth. Weiss ignores her placidly, free hand tapping against her thigh as if she’s counting off memories.

“What about the time she broke three fingers in her hand and didn’t tell anyone because she didn’t want to overtax Jaune’s semblance?”

“Hey,” Yang says indignantly. “Ren’s _leg_ was broken--” 

She’s cut off when Blake’s hand slaps over her mouth. 

“You see what we have to deal with?” Blake says to the gravestone. “Unbelievable. We do our best to take care of her, I promise, but honestly. So stubborn.”

“Always has to be strong,” Weiss adds, fingernails skidding up Yang’s spine and then back down, dragging a shiver down with them. “Always has to take care of everyone first.”

She’s not looking to the granite anymore, focusing instead on Yang; Blake’s turned as well, hand curling along the back of Yang’s head.

“Wouldn’t have it any other way,” she says softly, turning Yang’s head until she can hold her gaze firmly. “Would we?”

“Absolutely not,” Weiss says from her other side, quiet and solid like always. “Your mom would be incredibly proud of you, Yang. Just like we are.”

“Sap,” Blake says playfully from the other side, but her hand finds Weiss’s along Yang’s spine, the both of them settling low at her back and holding easy there, and Yang breathes into their touch. 

“I don’t know what we’re supposed to do now,” she says quietly. “After-- everything. I thought it’d be easy after, but it’s just--”

“Empty,” Blake murmurs. She tilts her head down onto Yang’s shoulder, short hair curling along Yang’s neck. 

“Except for Weiss, who managed to get, like, eight jobs,” Yang adds, one side of her mouth hitching up into a smile, and Weiss huffs out a sigh.

“It was either that or leave _Whitley_ to handle the company and _Winter_ on the council. Honestly. The minute I find a suitable replacement I’m stepping down from the council, because--”

“Weiss,” Blake says softly. “You should stay. No one else will steer it right.”

“She’s right,” Yang adds. Her hand skims along Weiss’s leg, fingertips tugging absently at the hem of her dress, the yellow of her prosthetic matching almost perfectly to the material. 

Weiss is quiet for long seconds, staring blankly out at the horizon. The sun’s half-set now, throwing hues of red and orange out across the sky, shadows stretching along the ground. 

“As long as I’m on the council, I have to live in Mantle,” she says eventually. “It’s reconstruction now so there isn’t even a city anymore, really, but once there is, once Mantle is rebuilt, I-- I have to live there.”

“Yeah,” Blake says, simple and easy. “Makes sense, though. SDC is there, too.”

“But you can still take jobs outside of the city,” Yang chimes in. “Maybe not long ones, but when you need a break. There’ll be cleanup jobs all over Solitas, all over everywhere, for ages.”

“I know,” Weiss says, halting, tension spreading into her frame at Yang’s side. “But--”

“Weiss,” Blake says with a sigh. “We’re going with you.”

“What?”

“Duh.” Yang rolls her eyes. “Was that not obvious?”

Weiss sits up straighter, hand falling away from Yang’s back. “What?”

Yang whines pathetically but leans back on her hands, sprawling her legs out in front of her, heels digging into the grass, groaning as her knees ache with relief at the stretch. Blake shifts to sit cross-legged at her side, elbows on her knees and eyebrows raised. 

“What what?” she says drily. “Weiss, we can live or work anywhere, but _you_ have so much to do in Atlas-- in _Mantle_. You can help fix so much wrong done there. Of course you should be there, and of course we’re going with you.”

“But it’s _Atlas_ ,” Weiss squeaks out. “Or I mean, it was-- it’s Mantle, I mean, it’s-- racist, Blake, it’s terrible.”

“It was,” Blake says, head tilting, ears flicking. “It is. But it’s already changing. Weiss, it’s barely been a month and every anti-faunus law has been struck down, the military has been separated from the academy, and you severed every existing SDC contract with the government so they could all go up for new review. A _month_.”

Weiss flushes, staring down at her hands in her lap, and Yang watches with raised eyebrows as her blush reaches for her ears. 

“Those were all your idea,” Weiss says delicately, and Blake rolls her eyes.

“But you made them happen,” Yang says. “Take the win, Weiss, okay? And just accept it. You’re doing good in Atlas. Mantle. Whatever it’s called now. And we’re going with you.” 

“Also,” Blake adds, eyebrow lifting. “Winter offered me a job.”

Weiss makes a noise like a vacuum cleaner and nearly falls over, stopped only by Yang catching her and keeping her from tumbling back down the hill.

“Well played,” Yang says through a laugh, grinning wide and bright at Blake, the uncertainty and instability from earlier forgotten. 

“What?” Weiss wheezes out, glaring at Blake, then at Yang. “You knew about this?”

“Of course.” Yang shrugs. “I already lined one up, too. We’re war heroes, Weiss. We have, like, _medals_ and everything. You’re saying you didn’t also get eight hundred job offers?”

“But you were just-- you said you didn’t know what--”

“I meant, like, existentially.” Yang rolls her eyes. “We’re huntresses, Weiss, all of us. We’ll always have something to do with our _time_. That’s the easy part. It’s everything else that’s harder to figure out. Purpose is complicated.”

Blake’s hand curls around her arm, fingers tracing the veins on the inside of her wrist, and Yang sinks into the feeling, the way it closes the circuit from where her other hand is still pressed against Weiss’s hip.

“Well, what are they, then?” Weiss demands, cheeks still dusted pink and indignant. “These mystery jobs neither of you felt like telling me about?”

“Teaching at the academy,” Yang says lazily, eyes half shut, because Weiss’s hip fits neatly into her hand and Blake’s fingers are sliding methodically up and down her wrist and it’s warm and easy, here at home where she grew up, with the family she found in front of the family she grew up with. 

“Oh,” Weiss breathes out. “That’s-- perfect for you, Yang, you’d be an amazing teacher.”

“I know, right?” Yang opens her eyes just so she can wink, cocky and arrogant, the way that always makes Weiss burn and flush right up to the tips of her ears, and it works like it does every time. “Gonna whip some Atlesian brats right into real fighting shape. With the military out of the way, Solitas can finally turn out some real hunters.”

“What about you?” Weiss says softly, peering past Yang to Blake and the way she’s watching them both quietly, and she smiles, slow and wolfish.

“I’m your head of security,” she says, warm and lazy, and something burns deep in Yang’s chest and is echoed in the way Weiss’s eyes darken. She’s known for days, the same way Blake’s known about her teaching post, as they brainstormed the best way to ease Weiss into it, to combat her worry about dragging them all to Atlas, but having known of it already doesn’t make it any less attractive to consider now. “Technically for the whole council, but the rest of them could get eaten by an ursa for all I care.”

“Oh,” Weiss says faintly. “Really?”

Blake lifts one shoulder and Yang and Weiss both stare at the way her collarbone shifts, and she smiles, sharp and predatory, tilting her head to one side so the muscles in her neck shift obviously and they can both watch, helpless against it like alway. “It means I can take any mission outside of the kingdom that you do without it interfering with the day job.” 

She turns serious, the sharp look fading into something solemn. “You’re going to piss off a lot of people,” she says carefully. “And _you_ don’t need me to protect you, I know.”

“But we need you to let her do it anyways,” Yang says, because the same worry’s settled in her chest since Weiss accepted the position on the council, since the first emergency legislation passed to start equalizing faunus rights and the death threats started rolling in. “For us.”

“I--” Weiss starts, and then stops, mouth opening and closing. She pauses, looking back down at her hands and then over to the gravestone. “Are you both sure?”

“Do you remember Mountain Glenn?” Yang says instead of answering. “Oobleck asking all of us why we wanted to be huntresses.”

“Ugh,” Weiss mutters. “Yes. Don’t remind me.” She pauses again, forehead creasing. “You wanted adventure, Yang. This won’t be an adventure. It’s--routine, and staying in one place.” 

She looks past Yang to Blake, uncertainty plain in the set to her mouth, the twist of her hands in her lap. “And this is-- politics, and terrible racist people, Blake. This isn’t--”

“It’s helping people,” Blake says quietly. “Righting wrongs. Building a better world.”

“And I think we’ve had enough adventure for one lifetime,” Yang adds. One hand skims over the exposed burn scars on Weiss’s shoulder, the damaged muscles hidden under Blake’s shirt. “I’m ready to settle down, I think. Together.”

“I thought you’d want to be based here,” Weiss says carefully, glancing at Yang, then to Summer’s grave. “To be close to--” She pauses, breathes, shifts her eyes to Blake. “Or Menagerie.”

“We’ll travel,” Blake says easily. “We’re huntresses, Weiss. Tai, my parents-- they understand. They know. They also all know who _you_ are, and what you can do in Atlas.”

“Literally everyone except you has known since the war ended that we’d follow you to Atlas before we’d let you resign from the council,” Yang says with a scoff. “Ruby straight up told me before she left that she’s just going to come straight there once she’s done brooding.”

“She’s not brooding,” Weiss says, automatic, defensive. “Don’t insult her in front of your mother, Yang.”

“She’s my sister, I’ll insult her in front of my mother all I want,” Yang says, a whine edging into her voice, and Blake digs an elbow into her side, dragging a laugh out of her. Yang turns until she can flop into Blake’s lap, slumping back against her, Blake’s chin in her hair so they can both watch Weiss, who clears her throat under their scrutiny.

“You always wanted to undo everything your father did,” Blake says, her voice a low rumble against Yang’s back. “And you will, and we’ll be there.”

“You’re sure?” Weiss casts another glance to Summer’s gravestone. “You both missed so much time at home--”

“We’re a family, Weiss,” Yang says firmly. She reaches back lazily, fingers winding up through Blake’s short hair, and takes her own look at her mother’s grave, soft and sure. “Mom would understand. She was a huntress, too. She made a home here, but it wasn’t where she grew up. She’d know what it is to build our own place in the world.”

“And we’ll come back,” Blake adds, hands settled soft over Yang’s stomach. “We’ll visit here, and to my parents, and wherever Ruby winds up. We’ll still see everyone, wherever they wind up. Just because we live in Atlas doesn’t mean we never go other places.”

“I certainly hope not,”Weiss mutters. She pulls in a deep breath. “Okay. So we’re moving to Atlas.”

“Duh,” Yang says, rolling her eyes. “Now, onto more important things.”

“More important than settling our entire future?” Weiss says drily.

“Blake and I settled that ages ago.” Yang flaps a hand when Weiss squawks indignantly. “More importantly: Weiss. Did you come to meet my mother at her grave with a _hickey_ on your throat?”

Weiss lets out a truly undignified noise and slaps a hand over her throat. “Blake!” she hisses out. “Did you-- why didn’t you _say_ anything--”

“There _are_ mirrors in the house,” Blake says mildly. Her fingers drag at the hem of Yang’s shirt lazily, and Yang slaps at them.

“Didn’t I tell you not to have too much fun without me?” she says, craning her head up to glare at Blake.

“It’s not my fault you didn’t join us.” Blake arches an eyebrow at her and then moves, abruptly, dumping Yang onto the grass. She rolls three feet down the hill before righting herself and Weiss laughs, clear and bright, and Yang props herself up onto her elbows and grins, wide and easy, settled for the first time since they landed on the island.

She pushes up to her feet, bare toes digging into the grass, familiar and warm, and holds a hand out to each of them. Weiss slides in at one side, hand low on her spine again, and Blake’s hand slides into her back pocket, and Yang watches, content, as the last edges of the sun slip past the horizon past her mother's headstone.

“Come on,” she says after a moment. “Let’s figure out dinner.”

“I’m not cooking,” Blake says immediately.

“No one wants you to cook, Blake,” Weiss says, longsuffering. “You only know how to make one thing.”

“Excuse you,” Blake says with a huff. 

Yang is quiet, listening to them bicker as they turn and make their way down the hill and back towards the house. She glances back towards her mother’s headstone, the first of too many losses that have always dragged her shoulders down, and then looks to Weiss on one side of her, blue eyes daybright even after the sun’s set, and Blake on the other, eyes smoldering gold as she teases Weiss, and smiles. The war’s over, finally, but they’re just getting started.

* * *

_listen, the birds sing_   
_listen, the bells ring_   
_all the living are dead, and the dead are all living_   
_the war is over and we are beginning_

**Author's Note:**

> the initial idea of "yang takes weiss and blake to summer's grave for the first time and they roast her mercilessly" came from [catalyswitch](https://catalyswitch.tumblr.com/) and i totally butchered it and i offer my most humble apologies.


End file.
